Covid Watch -- December 20, 2020

Weekly cases per 100,000 people: the top five --

• Nevada enters the list at #5 -- as noted earlier, the southwest USA was the center of activity, and moving to southern Californai
• California is still #2 but should be #1 any day now;
• Tennessee (#1), Rhode Island (#3), Arizona (#4).

Herd immunity (link here):

• North Dakota (#1) at 11.8%
• South Dakota (#2) at 10.7%
• US average: 5.5%
• Texas (#28): 5.5%
• California (#36): 4.7% -- a long way to go

Death rates fall: better medical care? From The WSJ -- hospitals retreat from early Covid treatment and return to basics. Changing practices, based on data and experience, appear to be improving outcomes for the sickest coronavirus patients.

Doctors are treating a new flood of critically ill coronavirus patients with treatments from before the pandemic, to keep more patients alive and send them home sooner. 

Last spring, with less known about the disease, doctors often pre-emptively put patients on ventilators or gave powerful sedatives largely abandoned in recent years. 

The aim was to save the seriously ill and protect hospital staff from Covid-19. Now hospital treatment for the most critically looks more like it did before the pandemic. Doctors hold off longer before placing patients on ventilators. Patients get less powerful sedatives, with doctors checking more frequently to see if they can halt the drugs entirely and dialing back how much air ventilators push into patients’ lungs with each breath. 

“Let us go back to basics,” said Dr. Eduardo Oliveira, executive medical director for critical-care services for AdventHealth Central Florida, which recommends its doctors stick with pre-pandemic guidelines for ventilator use. “The less you deviate from it, the better.” Advances also include new drugs, most notably steroids, for severely ill patients.

**********************************
MLB  Payrolls Drop Plunged This Past Season

Numbers:

• prior season: $4.22 billion
• most recent pandemic-shortened season: $1.75 billion
• 4.22 - 1.75 = 2.47
• 2.47 / 4.22 = a drop of almost 60%
• basic wages:
• 2019: $3.99 billion; let's call it $4 billion
• 2020: $1.54 billion
• 3.99 - 1.54 = 2.45
  2.45 / 3.99 = 61%
  

*********************************
Market Futures

Disclaimer: this is not an investment site.  Do not make any investment, financial, job, career, travel, or relationship decisions based on what you read here or think you may have read here. 

• Dow: implied open -- up 200 points
• S&P 500: implied open -- up 6 points
• NASDAQ: implied open -- down 23 points